The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principlea mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game . If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of chiropractic, astrology or cannibalism.

ATTRIBUTION:

H. L. MENCKEN, The Library, The American Mercury, May 1930, p. 123.

This view of Menckens comes from his book review of The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes (1930).